The Great One Is Born: Wayne Gretzky's Monumental Season

Abstract

Statistics and athletic sports have always had a strong connection that many critics, fans and statisticians utilize to determine how successful a team or an individual player might be over an entire season or even throughout one’s career. The success of a player or team is often characterized by investigating the consistency that has been shown throughout the season or career, which has led to more investigation of the streakiness of players. Studies have been done to examine great streaks, such as Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak or Tiger Woods’ 142 consecutive cuts made streak, but what about the outstanding streak that occurred during the 1983-1984 NHL season? Wayne Gretzky, of the Edmonton Oilers, managed to showcase just how elite he was as a playmaker during that season. Gretzky produced a remarkable 51-game point streak, in which he recorded at least one goal or point in 51 consecutive games; a streak that has not received the recognition that it deserves. Using game-by-game data for the entire 1983-1984 NHL season for all players, the research looks at not only the evaluation of Gretzky’s streak, but also compares his production and streak to the remainder of the league. Gretzky demonstrated why he is one of the greatest players to ever step foot on the ice, and his elite status is shown throughout this analysis. Comparing Gretzky’s streak to that of DiMaggio’s was shown to be a little challenging but, some general conclusions were made based on the comparison of analyses that were performed; but without the proper statistics being readily available, it is hard to adequately dictate which streak is ultimately more impressive or more rare.